RESEARCH

Formally trained in both Linguistics and Sociology, I am an interdisciplinary scholar of language and social life. In the broadest sense, my research explores how humans use the resources of language to make sense with one another, and to make sense of one another, in social interaction.

I typically divide my research agenda into three broad, overlapping areas, which I describe in greater detail in the sections below:

  1. Basic Structures of Human Social Interaction

  2. Language in Institutional Contexts

  3. Language in the lives of Latinx and Spanish Speakers (especially in the U.S.)

These do not represent discrete research ‘projects’, but rather themes that I recurrently revisit in my work. Some recent publications are highlighted as examples below, but see CV & Publications for a complete listing.

 

Image from a Spanish-language news interview analyzed in Raymond (2022), where the Interviewee refers to the Interviewer (named Ana) as “Anita”, using a diminutive.

Figure from Enfield, et al. (2019), comparing rates of interjection vs. repetition answer types across 14 languages.

Images from Thompson, Fox & Raymond (2021) on how participants design proposals during joint activities. Here, while painting a table with four friends, Leo makes a vocal proposal, accompanied by a pointing gesture.

[1] Basic Structures of Human Social Interaction

As a conversation analyst and interactional linguist, I am interested in the fundamental practices, mechanisms, and structures that participants make use of as they move through social interaction with one another. My primary focus in this area seeks to understand how interactants produce and understand particular communicative practices in the service of action, in addition to how these practices intersect with social identities, norms, relations, and inequalities. In this area, I work most intimately with data involving monolingual speakers of English and of Spanish, as well as bilingual Spanish-English speakers. Recent research has explored:

Language, norms, and normativity (esp. concerning gender, sexuality, regional, and dialectal identities)

Repair (dealing with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding)

Question and answer design

Specific interactional practices and actions

‘Mimi & Eunice’ cartoon, which happens to reflect some of Heritage, Raymond & Drew’s (2019) findings on the design of apologies.

[2] Language in Institutional Contexts

In addition to exploring features of basic human social interaction, I am also interested in how language and interactional practices intersect with objectives and outcomes in various institutional contexts. To name but a few settings reflected in my prior published work, I have examined call-ins to a bilingual radio station, shoe-repair-shop transactions, 911 emergency service calls, FIFA Women’s World Cup broadcast commentary, primary and secondary care medical consultations, and hearings of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

Particularly in the case of governmental and service-based institutions like medicine, a constant guiding interest for me is the identification of ‘best practices’ for serving members of the public. This routinely leads me to consider issues of language-based inequalities, especially in the case of U.S. Spanish speakers, which I describe in greater detail in the section below.  

Some of my research in this area includes:

Some other, ongoing projects:

Questioning during the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, analyzed in Raymond, et al. (2019). (Photo taken from the BBC, 2018)

Image of FIFA Women’s World Cup announcers (Jorge Pérez Navarro & Andrea Rodebaugh), from collaborative work with Holly R. Cashman (2014, 2021) on gender & institutional identities in U.S. Spanish sports broadcasting discourse.

[3] Language in the lives of Latinx folks and Spanish Speakers (especially in the U.S.)

Encompassing both of the prior two categories is my work with Latinx folks and Spanish speakers, especially in the southwestern United States. Despite not being designated an ‘official’ Spanish-speaking country, the U.S. has more Spanish speakers than any other country in the world, with the exception of Mexico. I am interested in all aspects of the ‘linguistic life’ of these individuals and their communities—from mundane conversational contexts and practices, to those occurring in institutional settings. My research across these contexts routinely highlights issues of identity and group membership, language/dialect contact, as well as (especially in institutional contexts) language rights and language access.

In addition, much of the impetus for (and output from) the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI) project was due to my work with Spanish speakers in the U.S.